Fragments of Noir

Wednesday, 18 February 2026

Like the Town

Their faces were foreign like the town ; brown Mexican faces, and their voices, unaccompanied, were like a heaven choir. He didn't care about that. He hadn't come here to pray ; he'd come to keep his eye on a rat. He wasn't going to be sucked in by holiness.

Ride the Pink Horse
Dorothy B Hughes
1946

Tuesday, 17 February 2026

Mosaic Noir #231

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Deadlier Than the Male

The Verdict (1982)

Double Indemnity

The Killers (1964)

Lady from Shanghai

Angel Heart

The Sniper

Hot Spot

The Burglar

Reservoir Dogs

Killers Kiss

Human Being Becomes

Utterly usurped by his addictions, he was a nightmare to behold, particularly in his last decades - his toenails long and filthy, hair unkempt and unwashed, teeth unbrushed ; he did not like to bathe. Drugs twisted his character too, forced him to lie, cheat, sell his instruments even. Mostly he could be counted on to be conniving and apathetic, what a human being becomes deep into drugs. Still his music arose out of this muck, like a lotus springs from mud.

Chet Baker and His Abandoned Shadows
Arya F. Jenkins
jerryjazzmusiciam.com
2016

image
David Diehl

https://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/chet-baker-and-his-abandoned-shadows-an-essay-and-poem-by-arya-f-jenkins/

Monday, 16 February 2026

Even Bad Luck is Some Kind of Luck #156

Salton Sea

Odd Man Out

Devil in a Blue Dress

In Cold Blood

Year of the Dragon

Act of Violence

Mr Klein

I Want to Live

Mob City

Killer That Stalked New York

Kalifornia

Le Cercle Rouge

Third Man

Carol

Glengarry Glen Ross

Crime Wave

The Hot Spot

The Conformist

To Have and Have Not

Plein Soleil

Nickel Ride

Killers Kiss

Miami Blues

Touch of Evil

Memento

Sunday, 15 February 2026

Vivian Maier

Some tellings of Maier's story suggest that perhaps we should feel a proxy regret, that we should feel sorry about her solitude, her rages, her dark edges, her impecunious existence. Shall we make her a martyr or can we allow that she may have had the life she wanted ? How did she see herself ? We know that she was looking at that too - the copious self-portraits prove it. She often photographed her own sphinx-like expression in the reflection of bathroom mirrors, car windows, shop windows, shards of glass and curves of aluminum. She captured her shadow creeping across the frame to touch an empty sidewalk, a lone horseshoe crab, a flowering lawn. These pictures help me to understand, finally, that Maier isn't invisible, except to us. She was looking at herself all along.

Rose Lichter-Marck
(on Vivian Maier)
The New Yorker
2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJFT5nPQ2Uc